ASERL Centers of Excellence

This Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL) program envisions the creation of several comprehensive collections of U.S.government information from each Federal government agency. Built upon the foundation of existing holdings at existing Regionals, these collections will become more complete with assistance from Selectives in the ten ASERL states. The program envisions at least five two centers of excellence for each agency to ensure an appropriate level of redundancy within the Southeast for both quick delivery and preservation. Centers of excellence would:

• actively replace damaged or lost pieces,
• seek to fill holes in their collections, as necessary, via Needs and Offers lists,
• provide active preservation for the collection,
• catalog the pieces that they own on OCLC and identify them as the archival copy,
• participate in GPO’s program to set holdings on OCLC for Regionals free of charge, if eligible,
• participate in the ASERL union catalog (Kudzu) and ILL/Document Delivery agreements.

ASERL believes creating these “centers of excellence” will result in more reliable and predictable access to Federal publications for all libraries and citizens in the Southeastern states by specifying which Regional Depository libraries have the most complete holdings for each agency.